Mary Lou Greenberg
Revolutionary Worker #995, February 21, 1999
On Monday evening, February 8, a different voice was finally heard on the subject that has dominated the media for over a year, the Starr investigation and the impeachment hearings. Motivated by the urgent need for the people's opposition to be heard--and by the overwhelmingly positive response to the "Stop the Inquisition" statement which several of us had initiated--forces came together to present a powerful program in NYC on "The Inquisition in Washington: What it Means for the People."
I have followed the inquisition closely and have attended various events in NYC which have opposed the impeachment proceedings. And I have felt very frustrated because, while some speakers at all of these have presented valuable insights, the issue of just what all this means for the people (if addressed at all) has been eclipsed by such questions as what this means for the Constitution or the future of the Presidency. Or they have become essentially rallies to support Clinton and the Democrats, ignoring the fact that Clinton and the Democrats have been responsible for great suffering among the people.
But this event was different. While diverse viewpoints were presented about Clinton and about what needs to be done, the speakers all addressed things principally from the standpoint of the interests of ordinary people and engaged the audience and each other in an important discussion around the political and ideological meaning of the events in Washington, what the forces behind it represent, and what needs to be done to oppose it. There were divergent views on the role and importance of voting--but also unity on the need to build mass resistance and opposition.
The speakers brought their own impressive histories and backgrounds to bear on the question: Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics, and Gloria Steinem, consulting editor of Ms. magazine, who have played critical roles in the modern women's movement from the '60s through the present; law professor and author Derrick Bell who is well known for his activism around affirmative action and other issues; actor/filmmaker Lee Grant who has won awards for her films exposing, among other things, homelessness and domestic violence; and, from the new generation of activist academics, NYU history professor and cultural critic Robin D.G. Kelley who has written about African-American history and attacks on Black people today.
It was truly a stellar panel which I was very excited to be part of, speaking as a member of the National Council of Refuse & Resist! and also bringing in my independent political perspective as a revolutionary communist. Speakers addressed many aspects of this inquisition, from the complicity of the media to the difference between sexual harassment and consensual sex. It was clear that everyone had thought about the situation deeply, and had been moved by the seriousness and urgency of it to speak out.
For my part I wanted to emphasize the need to reverse the political and ideological momentum of the last decade or so by building resistance to the whole reactionary program--and the importance of fighting the inquisition as part of this.
What came across very powerfully to me in helping organize and participate in this effort were the possibilities for building broad unity to oppose the whole politics of cruelty, including this inquisition. And the reactions of the largely student audience showed the power of such groupings to influence others and move them to action. One questioner posed a challenge to the "famous people" on the panel to encourage additional well-known people to speak out because "people listen to you." In response, several speakers encouraged students (and others) to get involved regardless of who urges them to. In thinking about this later, however, I think the particular combo represented on the panel, along with the audience, is a particularly potent mix with some important lessons for the future. When people with "name recognition" speak out, they can indeed command attention. And when they speak in the interests of the people, as they did on this panel, this is a good thing, indeed.
The discussion period was intense--and that intensity was certainly heightened by the fact that only a few days before, New York police had murdered Amadou Diallo in his own doorway. There was a sense of urgency and seriousness in the room. The threat to abortion was also deeply felt and discussed. One young woman rose to the mike. She said she had only recently learned that her mother had had an illegal abortion--she had kept the secret for so many years because of a lingering sense of shame. The young woman herself has had two abortions, she said, and she had no feelings of shame about it. But, she asked the room, "Can I be put on trial for crimes against the state in 20 to 30 years when abortion is illegal?"
From the beginning, you could tell this event was going to be different from others organized around this issue. Professor Derrick Bell, the first speaker, posed the question right off the bat: "What the heck am I doing here defending a man who has so disappointed me.... The short answer is that I am not here so much supporting Clinton as opposing his enemies."
Throughout the program, speakers detailed Clinton's real crimes: welfare "reform," support for the death penalty, curtailing defendants' rights, etc. And at the same time, we all brought to bear our own experiences, insights and political perspectives in exposing the inquisition and the dangers it poses.
Lee Grant said that "when McCarthyism swept this country, when fear was in our nostrils, I was blacklisted and unable to work for 12 years. In every decade the ghost of McCarthy shows up in a new transformation." Gloria Steinem related comments of some of her "older European friends who come here and look around and say, `This IS fascism, you know."' She went on to tell the story of how, if a frog is dropped into hot water it will leap out and save itself. "But if you heat the water gradually, gradually, gradually, the frog will die. And that is what is happening to us now... We are having our standards changed, the center is shifting, the water is being heated just a little bit at a time."
Kate Millett, whose recent book is titled The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment, urged people to put "the consequences of this trial, of the right's cultural and sexual inquisition, together with the bigger picture of repression in America today. The U.S. holds more of its citizens in prison now than any country in the world. We have long ago surpassed South Africa.... Gradually, our country is becoming a carcerial state, that is, one where incarceration approaches normalcy."
Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Yo Mama's Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, summed up the situation for many when he said: "I can't see my role to be a defender of Clinton, but I do see it as being an active participant in the struggle against this inquisition. I think this is an important battle to wage not because something bad is about to happen because a whole bunch of bad stuff has been happening..." He concluded: Clinton and the Democrats "are going to move us further to the right and try to out-right the right, with more repressive measures, further erosion of civil liberties, and a more aggressive promotion of so-called family values, to prove how good they are, even after this is all over. Which means we have to ask a question: who will stand up and fight for us? There's no one else to do that but us."
"When McCarthyism swept this country, when fear was in our nostrils, I was blacklisted, unable to work for 12 years. Every decade the ghost of McCarthy shows up in a new transformation...."The one good thing about Starr's Gothic persistency, and the shocking part about the congressional attack, is that for the first time when the boil was pierced the ugly sore was there for all to see."
| Lee Grant |
"We have to reverse the political and ideological momentum of the last decade or so by building resistance to the whole reactionary program. If we don't, things will be shifted more and more to the right--as they have been, no matter who's been elected. We have to fight the whole agenda and we have to fight the Inquisition as part of this, not apart from it. These forces, as shown by the comments by Robertson which I mentioned earlier, are going to grab every opening, go on the offensive however they can, to push their aggresively reactionary and repressive political and social agenda."In 1987, R&R!'s founding statement said that the political situation then developing was "not some periodic swing of the pendulum from `left' to `right"' but was a major "departure...[which] seeks a fundamentalist right-wing morality imposed by the state as the vehicle to crush noncomformist behavior--political, social and cultural." We see how far this has come with the Starr investigation and the impeachment proceedings....
"I came to political life in the '60s, and came into a very different morality than that pushed by the Starrs and Barrs. In my view, no one should profit off the labor of anyone else; and all enslavement, oppression, domination of one nation by another, of one people by another, of women by men--has to end. We may not all agree on this--and on just what the source of the problem is and how to deal with it--but I think there are some things that everybody who is concerned about this Inquisition AND the overall situation can unite on: We don't want to live in any society where people are monitored, persecuted and punished for consensual sex between adults. We don't want to live in a world that demonizes and criminalizes young people, where immigrants are hunted down by border police, or live in fear of their lives. We don't want to live in a world where women are brutalized, abused and forced to bear children they don't want. And we don't want to live in a world where fundamentalist morality becomes the basis for laws and is enforced by police-state practices. It's time for everyone who rejects the politics of cruelty and this Inquisition to refuse and resist!
| Mary Lou Greenberg |
"They have altered the climate of opinion in our age. They have not only moved all discourse many degrees to the right, miles perhaps, they have set the terms of discourse and reintroduced an ideology this entire century has discredited and backed it now with every official force. They have taken our sexual revolution, feminism, tolerance, the right to privacy, and most other civil rights before the ominous powers of the state. Coming from behind, representing a defeated and debilitated patriarchal fundamentalism, they have come a long damn way. However cleverly it has secularized its language and bridled its passion, the religious right has entered American politics as the leading force of opposition...."Clinton has spent his years in office executing Republican goals by depriving the poor of the protection of welfare and increasing the pressures of imprisonment. Some might make the case for impeachment on ethical grounds like these, or on the bombing of Sudan and Iraq. That is not an issue with the House managers. Sex and lies about sex are their concern, ferreting out sinfulness and defending values of the old and patriarchal order that is happy to starve and punish the poor for their children, in order to preserve the traditional criminalization of sexuality in women which is essential to patriarchal rule. Their leader, Henry Hyde, is responsible for the Hyde amendment which in one stroke deprived all poor women of Medicaid abortions....
"We have been reduced to the numbers in polls maggots seen through microscopes.... Our elected representatives have said a thousand times that they don't give a hoot in hell what we think anyway. Which is why we are here tonight. We have shut up and have had to shut up long enough."
| Kate Millett |
"I'm not here so much in supporting Clinton as opposing his enemies.... America has developed great expertise in making lesser of two evil choices. All tough choices. Our slave forebears hoping to be sold to the good, rather than the bad masters. And placing the emphasis on the adjective while trying to ignore the horror of the noun. Having escaped slavery and enlisted the Union forces and them determined to go into battle even though your side is refusing to pay you or recognize you as a human being.... And as for presidents, there has never been a pro-Black president. I mean if you don't believe me read Kenneth O'Reilly's book, Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton."
| Derrick Bell |
"Let's make no mistake, this is Kinder, Küche, Kirche, that's what it was about then, and that's what it's about now. This is exactly the kind of campaign that led up to the National Socialist victory at the ballot box, in a low voter turnout, in Germany between World Wars 1 and 2. If that seems far-fetched, just consider the issue of reproductive freedom...the National Socialists were foursquare against reproductive freedom, they made it very clear that it was the cornerstone of their campaign and indeed the first thing they did when they came to power was to padlock the family planning clinics and declare abortion a crime against the state. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said that we come to power we put to an end the ridiculous notion that a woman's body belongs to herself; a woman's body belongs to the state."Sometimes older European friends come here and look around and say, `This IS fascism, you know. This IS fascism.' And we think that it must have been different then, but it was not different then. There's this dreadful story of the frog...that is, if you drop a frog into hot water the frog will leap out and save itself. But if you heat the water gradually, gradually, gradually, the frog will die. And that is what is happening to us now, the water is being heated gradually, gradually, gradually. We're being told that Henry Hyde is a great and dignified leader. Do you remember what he did to women who talked at great pain about their late-term abortions ín Congressional hearingsñ. He accused them of being murderers. Yet he is being presented to us as great. We are having our standards changed, the center is shifting, the water is being heated just a little bit at a time."
| Gloria Steinhem |
"What we're witnessing, I think, is an outright, generalized repression, a dismantling of whatever little democracy some of us could enjoy...For the majority of young people, poor people, people of color, out gays and lesbians: we've been living in an atmosphere of daily repression for a long time. We have a long, rich, noble history of harassment and repression...of politically sanctioned state harassment and violence."Clinton has...helped generate an atmosphere of terror in some ways, an atmosphere in which police officers are feeling freer and freer to use violence without justification...a national trend to `get tough on crime' no matter what the costs are. This is why I can't see my role to be a defender of Clinton, but I do see it as being an active participant in the struggle against this inquisition. I think this is an important battle to wage not because something bad is about to happen because a whole bunch of bad stuff has been happening....
"[Clinton and the Democrats] are going to move us further to the right and try to out-right the right, with more repressive measures, further erosion of civil liberties, and a more aggressive promotion of so-called family values, to prove how good they are, even after this is all over. Which means we have to ask a question: who will stand up and fight for us? There's no one else to do that but us."
| Robin D.G. Kelley |
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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